[4.23] Star Counts in the NOAO Deep Wide-Field Survey

The NOAO Deep Wide-Field Survey will survey two ~9 sq.
deg. regions of sky in a suite of optical (Bw, R, I)
and infrared (J, H, K) bands. Although designed
primarily to study the formation and large scale structure
of galaxies, the survey can also be used to identify rare
stellar populations in the Galaxy and to study Galactic
structure. Here we compare the Bw, R, and I star
counts in a small portion of the Cetus field of the NOAO
Deep Wide-Field Survey with the counts predicted by a simple
Galactic structure model. The comparison is used to explore
the accuracy of catalog-generation programs such as Source
Extractor in performing star-galaxy separation at faint
magnitudes.

The NOAO Deep Wide-Field Survey is being supported by the
National Optical Astronomy Observatory which is operated by
the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy,
Inc., under a cooperative agreement with the National
Science Foundation. Michael Cooper's research was supported
by the NOAO/KPNO REU Program, funded by the National Science
Foundation.